A 74-year-old Belmont man is recovering after he was bitten by a rattlesnake in his garage.
Edmund Pieret said he was bit Thursday when reaching for one of his tools.
"I reached down to pick up one of the tools, now he must have been underneath where that red box is," Pieret said. "I figured it was a spider or something like that must have bit me, and then I heard a rattle."
Pieret was rushed to the hospital for treatment. On Friday he was nursing a swollen hand.
"I was not expecting it at all," he said. "I've never seen a rattlesnake around the property."
Experts are now warning residents to be cautious as a lack of water and the rising heat is leading to more snake encounters throughout the Bay Area.
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"They are moving to areas where there's water, and that happens to be lawns, obviously," said Dave Allen, a snake wrangler.
Allen said he has seen a recent spike in calls for snake removals.
View more in Derek Shore's video report above.
